Chris Martins

October 21, 2013 –
Lady Gaga and her former assistant Jennifer O'Neill have settled out of court for an undisclosed amount. The ARTPOP star's ex-employee originally alleged that she was owed $393,000, plus damages, for 7,168 hours of unpaid overtime. Their trial was scheduled to begin on November 4, but Judge Paul Gardephe filed an order of dismissal on Monday, October 21.In September, a number of details emerged that weren't particularly flattering for either side. O'Neill claimed that the woman born Stefani Germonotta kept her on call at all hours, even when the artist was on vacation. "We were never really on vacation," she testified.

October 21, 2013 –
Orchestrally inclined Montreal outfit the Besnard Lakes have released a stunning new video for "Colour Yr Lights In," from their April album Until in Excess, Imperceptible UFO. Seen above, the Sanchez Brothers-directed clip stars French-Canadian actor Martin Dubreuil as a man whose reality appears to be constantly crumbling around him. As the wintry, harmonically rich song opens, we see our star lying in bed, smoking a cigarette while he laughs maniacally or beats about his head with his own hands. As night falls, he hits the town, yelling at invisible demons, drinking at a bar, playing with a discarded bicycle wheel, and even soliciting a prostitute or two. The video is NSFW thanks to that last part, but the images aren't overly explicit. Those massive space-rock guitars, however...

October 21, 2013 –
Mac Miller is cool now, it's true. But that's not the only surprise to come from the Watching Movies With the Sound Off MC this year. On that same album, the man reveals a softer side via "Youforia," a crooned love song originally produced by Clams Casino. But above you'll find Miller alone with his keyboard and a microphone, serenading an unseen lover. Footage of him performing the track live on the Space Migration tour is interspersed with more on-the-road imagery: travel buddy Earl Sweatshirt dancing, a girl in the crowd flashing the stage, Miller drumming and rapping in slow motion, and backstage pregame rituals. The whole thing feels like a flashback montage of a summer well spent. (Take that, Donald Trump.)Miller and Sweatshirt previously collaborated on the Doris standout "Guild," and will both appear at the forthcoming Odd Future Carnival in Los Angeles come November.

October 21, 2013 –
Here's something that happened: coke-rap expert and Clipse co-founder Pusha T rapping over a trap-rave remix of "I'll Be Gone" by nü-metal purveyors Linkin Park. All of that is true but if you don't believe your eyes, try it out on your ears via the SoundCloud player below. The wild Vice revision will have a home on Recharged, a remix album from the Agoura Hills rap-rock O.G.s set for an October 29 release and featuring reworked versions of songs from their 2012 full-length Living Things. Musical reboots come courtesy of Rick Rubin, Money Mark, Datsik, Nick Catchdubs, and others, while Bun B is set to rhyme on a Rad Omen remix of "Roads Untraveled." Linkin Park's recent collaboration with Steve Aoki, "A Light That Never Comes," will open the 14-song set.

October 21, 2013 –
Radiohead fan hub At Ease is currently under attack via a series of spam articles posting to the website's news feed. While the page seen above — which speaks on the woes of "female's" everywhere "that dream in carrying the most up to date satchel from Lv" — has since been taken down, it's likely been replaced by another.

October 21, 2013 –
M.I.A.'s Drake-busting new single "Y.A.L.A." is (for) now streaming in full via the YouTube clip below. The track trolls the YOLO philosophy of the Ellen-approved Nothing Was the Same star via its titular acronym, which stands for "You Always Live Again" Toward the end of the song, Maya drawls, "YOLO? I don't even know anymore. What that mean though? If you only live once, why we keep doing the same shit? Back home, where I come from, we keep being born again and again ... That's why they invented karma." The song itself is a blurty, percussive club-thumper that features our host sing-shouting about Polo, banana poles (?), and Cointreau, among other things. M.I.A. spoke of her November 5 Matangi LP in a recent interview with Fader, wherein she declared, "I found spirituality on Google." Though we've heard of "Instant Karma," we're not sure it's typically search engine-assisted.

October 21, 2013 –
Arcade Fire have premiered the full studio version of "Afterlife," a highlight from their forthcoming fourth album Reflektor, which they initially performed during last month's Saturday Night Live appearance. The Montreal ensemble also teased the track with a Haiti-inspired short video and shared the lyrics along with those of a handful of other songs we've so far only seen in live settings. "Afterlife" debuted via BBC Radio 1's Zane Lowe. The jaunty, disco-indebted song deals with the fear of losing love (and, like, life) and features poignant interplay between frontman Win Butler and his wife/baby's mama Régine Chassagne. Tickets for Arcade Fire's recent New York City gigs as the Reflektors hit $5,000 thanks to scalpers.

October 21, 2013 –
Rihanna was asked to leave a mosque in Abu Dhabi after she was spotted posing for photographs on the grounds. Though she was clothed in accordance with the Grand Shiek Zayed Mosque's guidelines — in black, with only her face and hands showing — she was given the boot because the photos were not in sync with the "status and sanctity of the mosque." Possibly because the results looked like a Vogue fashion spread and were shot by professional photographers.A statement from the mosque published in local papers (via Associated Press) also said that the iconic Unite Arab Emirates landmark is not open to visitors. However, the capital city's official tourism site lists the Grand Sheik Zayed Mosque as the first attraction under its "What to See" tab, adding, "Why not finish sight-seeing or shopping for the day and take the 5pm 'Sunset Tour'?

October 21, 2013 –
Twitter is reportedly close to retiring its #Music app, although the song discovery tool was only rolled out in April. According tech site AllThingsD, citing "multiple sources familiar with the matter," the mobile application has performed terribly. Though it was No. 6 under the App Store's free downloads bracket upon release, interest dropped off quickly — the blog's contact called the numbers "abysmal" in terms of both downloads and user engagement.Onavo has crunched the numbers, noting a 14.4 percent drop-off in users in the month of August alone, and ranking #Music as the 1,672nd most popular app in the iPhone game. Zeroing in further, analytics provider AppAnnie ranks Twitter's audio component at No. 264 within Apple-friendly music-related applications, says AllThingsD.

October 21, 2013 –
Jessie Ware is currently working her way through the States behind the recently reissued Devotion, a SPIN Essential. While that set is indeed chock full of "silken, saturnine, Sade-indebted" songs, she's reportedly been at work on a 2014 followup, and performed a brand new track dubbed "True Believers" during an encore at a stop in Dallas late last week (via Listen Before You Buy). Seen and heard above, the unreleased gem is a slowly crawling ballad that implores, "Let's get lost forever." Humming keys and warm guitar figures are complemented by a minimal drum beat, and though the song grows as it goes, Ware's voice is always the star. The London singer was among our favorite moments of San Francisco's Outside Lands festival this year, and she recently popped up on a fresh Julio Bashmore track called "Peppermint."